minix

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ed
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#1 minix

Post by ed »

having spent the larger part of the last 2 weeks shoehorning linux distros into the youngest' computer I thought I'd about done with computers for a while.
oh no.....
I switched on the mem sahib's laptop this morning to find firefox trying to download a failed iso from the night before. elementaryos.

mmm...the gist of the last 2 weeks has been loading a particular distro only to find he's not happy with it for some reason and wanting to move on to another flavour.....so far he's had ubuntu, debian, fedora and lately arch. Each of these has been a real pain to install for a number of reasons, and I thought with arch he'd reached the end of his fidgets. No sir, there now seems to be this elementaryos.

I think I will leave him to play by himself for a while....if he reaches the partitioning stage there's a good chance he'll be without a computer for a while, at least until I relent.

In the meantime I think I will give him the old beaglebone black and suggest he investigate minix.

if anybody is still reading this...any experience of minix?
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#2 Re: minix

Post by Nick »

if anybody is still reading this...any experience of minix
Not since the 90's before Bell Labs opened up the source and allowed more actual unix ports to PC based hardware. Also at the time stuff like Xenix and Idris.

I would find out exactly what it is he didn't like about Debian and Ubuntu, as it may be that whatever it is it may be common to them all. He could roll his own distribution, but I suspect that will not end well if the existing ones are having installation problems.
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#3 Re: minix

Post by ed »

I'm guessing you're referring to Seb....
he's 12 years old and full of opinions, none of which pass the first logic hurdle.
He reads a glowing piece of misinformation, thinks it's better than sliced bread and just must have it.

So far he hasn't listened to one word I've tried to offer.

I have long since given up trying to explain...to my mind they are all the same but with different package management schemes. They will all run the same set of 'front-ends' so I'm baffled why each flavour has such vocifierous evangelists.

But....I'm pretty confident that left to his own devices he's going to come unstuck soemwhere along the line...and then he may not have a working computer and may, just may, take stock.....I am waiting

I mentioned minix because I've long since been impressed by the microkernel approach, why include it if you don't use it!!.
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#4 Re: minix

Post by Nick »

I'm guessing you're referring to Seb...
Well, I was referring to the same "he" as you used in your post, so I guess so.
He reads a glowing piece of misinformation, thinks it's better than sliced bread and just must have it.
Ok. Maybe he will learn something important about that part of life then at least.
to my mind they are all the same but with different package management schemes.
Well, there is not that many package management systems, but lots of front ends. Manly variations of rpm and debs. And of course you can just build from source. I agree though, unless you wander into the *bsd's they are all the same kernel, with one or more shells. Beyond that its what gui you chose to use, and there are not that many variants there either, though I guess they could have assorted skins and so look more varied than they actually are.

IMHO microkernels may have been a good idea, but not sure if there is much actual advantage for everyday use unless its a very small system that only needs mimal OS support, but its useful to provide a *nix like POSIX interface to enable the use of existing software. If anything general purpose computing is going in the other direction and getting to a similar place with hypervisors and virtual servers or container based systems.
Whenever an honest man discovers that he's mistaken, he will either cease to be mistaken or he will cease to be honest.
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